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Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily
eldavojohn writes "Working from the comfort of his home, Salman Khan has made available more than 1,500 mini-lectures to educate the world. Subjects range from math and physics to finance, biology, and current economics. Kahn Academy amounts to little more than a YouTube channel and one very devoted man. He is trying to provide education in the way he wished he had been taught. With more than 100,000 video views a day, the man is making a difference for many students. In his FAQ he explains how he knows he is being effective. What will probably ensure his popularity (and provide a legacy surpassing that of most highly paid educators) is that everything is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. He only needs his time, a $200 Camtasia Recorder, an $80 Wacom Bamboo Tablet, and a free copy of SmoothDraw3. While the lecturing may not be quite up to the Feynman level, it's a great augmenter for advanced learners, and a lifeline for those without much access to learning resources."
KAHHHHHHN !!!!!1!
C'mon. The link is to KHANacademy.org, and it's still titled KAHN?
It was just personal curiosity since I had heard of it but boy, he was so straight forward about it I understood very quickly. The guy deserves his success.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Khan = Muslim
When people stumble out of his lectures looking like they've been hit by a bus, then he'll have reached the 'Feynman' level. Right now IMHO he's already doing a better job of addressing normal students.
I think this is a very interesting way of bringing and old, maybe ancient, method of teaching back to the fore again.
If I recall correctly, Socrates taught by answering questions and encouraging new ones, not just spouting knowledge according to a set curricula, like we do today.
If used well, this strikes me as having a real impact for learning, and teaching, in a more natural way. I for one would love to see more of this kind of thing going on and being acknowledged as a legitimate and effective way to teach and learn.
I wish him and the viewers all the best.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Original article: 70k views per day
Original Slashdot submission: 70k views per day
Front page post after editing: Over 100k views per day
Stay classy, kdawson.
I had knowledge of this site sooner. My Linear Algebra professor was horrible at giving lectures.(I wasn't the only one who thought so) After reviewing some of the linear material, Khans videos are helpful even after several weeks of summer. In fact the videos on the Gram-Schmidt helped explain what I completely missed the first time.
I congratulate you Khan for your hard work to help educate the people of the world. I know it will serve me well in the upcoming year.
Does he tech Klingon?
not kahn.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
http://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/
Would have been nice if they had spelled the name right. My GOD, KDawson didn't even have to do anything like actually verify or read the site to review, he could have just looked at the two links in the damn summary.
Still, I had heard inklings of something like this somewhere before, but never hunted it down. Thanks for providing it. As someone that came to a mind-boggling late interest in actually learning any real math, I may have found a place to spend some serious time.
Thanks so much to Mr. Khan - a noble and important effort to drag those of us in dark ignorance into some level of glimmer.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
From Youtube's heart I vlog at thee.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
...can we get this guy to take a few weeks out of his regular schedule to please teach the fundamentals surrounding iPhone development so the tidal wave of bone head questions on the dev forums can be brought down...just a little...thanks.
In addition to the things listed above, he obviously has a pretty good grasp of instructional design principles.
I watched a couple videos, and has either studied it or learned from trial and error somewhere along the line.
Let us not forget this important glue that holds together solid instruction of any kind.
I, for one, I think that kadwson is doing a fine job with his spelling in these articles.
coding is life
It's Khan, not Kahn, a world of difference, please get it right slashdot eds. This is a geek site with attention to detail.
"The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere."
except in china or wherever youtube is blocked
That the first thing I thought when I read he licenses it all under Creative Commons was "Bet ASCAP would be pissed about that".
But this is a wonderful thing he's doing, kudos to him and I wish him luck. Will have to check out some of his lectures sometime.
.. but done them all.
Ask me anything you want!
His FAQ claims that the key indicator for his effectiveness is individual people telling him he is being effective.
This sounds more like a humanities than an orthodox economics assessment of labour productivity.
Is it possible to ask that just a bit nicely???
Is there a place where I can get the videos without a flash wrapper? It would be really appreciated? If not, would someone be willing to set it up so that this Kahn guy doesn't have to spend his time doing it? If not, does someone have 20TB or so of space and a really big connection so I can set up torrents for this.
I mean the guy's obviously put quite a bit of effort into this.. the effort to write a bit more tha.... oh get off my lawn :-)
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Torrents would be good if you were in a place where youtube was blocked ... like about 1/4 of the world's internet users.
Pirate Bay Link
. . . it's "KHAN", not "KAHN".
I work at a University, teaching Maths across many levels.
Khan's screencasts are nice - patient demos of how to do standard calculations. They are fairly traditional in some ways - 21st century chalk+talk.
They are mostly useful for the "what to do" as even these contain enough of the "why" to put it in context.
They complement what we do in formal classes, so we are happy to informally refer students on to them.
-- open source? sounds like the real book --
hmm maybe I can pass trigonometry now with khans help
He did say "plz". :-)
America, Home of the Brave.
When I read stories like this though, I'm forced to ask the question: Why lectures?
For me, studying from hypertext is infinitely more effective. I can pause whenever I like, check additional sources, cross-reference, backtrack, etc.
Personally, I think the hypertext is the greatest educational medium ever created. Universities clearly prefer lectures for a variety of (I would say) self-interested reasons. But unless you simply learn 'better' from spoken dialogue -- which is fine -- I think lectures are a very dated medium which are difficult to edit, expand upon and randomly access.
Access to lectures is great. I'm glad Kahn is doing this. But IMHO the true educational power of the web exists in the web's original, native medium: Hypertext.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
"With over 100,000 video views a day" I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that slashdotting will increase that number quite a bit.
I can't say that enough! As an older person who was returning to university your mathematics and physics exercises and videos were a life saver! I truly appreciate all the hard work and effort you've put into your educational materials (website, videos, lessons etc). They helped me immensely and I don't doubt for a second they will continue to do so when I finally begin my full time studies in September. It's people such as yourself that really help make a positive difference in our world. You're inspirational, thank you and keep up the excellent work. One last time: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Some1too.
So can I get a degree from this "Kahn" Academy?
From the site:
==============
How can I/you help?
The biggest thing is getting the word out. The students who use the site seem to really get excited by how quickly and deeply they can learn from it. Right now (5/2010), there are about 200,000 students using the site per month; no reason why it shouldn't be 20 million!
If you like to code or work on user interface design, you might be able to help on the Khan Academy applications which we are doing as an open source project
Why is parent modded offtopic?
- someone posts videos of free content on youtube
- youtube is not a very free place
- someone else requests the videos be delivered in a less restricted manner
Sounds topical to me.
I want my Cowboyneal
Kahn = Jewish
Khan = Muslim
Last I checked, "Muslim" was recognised as neither an ethnicity, nor a nationality. But don't get that in the way of trying to make life simple for yourself or others.
Salman Khan, IIRC, was born in New Awlins, and his parents are from some province in India. Someone else can add to that if they're so inclined.
Either way, he's an amazing guy. The word would be a better place if there more "Muslims" like him around. ;-)
His mother is from the Indian state of West Bengal, his father is from Bangladesh, which is a country
Plz and thx. Next thing you know he'll be handing out free coffee.
MMO Vampire Role Playing
One way to ask nicely is to spell his name right -- "Khan" not Kahn. In your defense, its misspelled once as Kahn in the summary.
I often doubt charity events and whatlike, but after seeing many videos of Khan and reading his small autobiography, I kinda trust him. I believe he's doing this for the sheer pleasure of teaching.
Lectures are very valuable for many if not most people. Different people are different types of learners. On the other hand, whether universities should still have people lecture the same intro classes over and over again when the lectures could just be taped is a different question. It seems to make more sense to allocate personal to answering students' questions. (Obviously, there are subject-specific differences as well.)
It's a question in educational design.
Lectures are just "Auditory Articles". The start of any educational module is a "TFA". Let's just presume the minimum = 1 sentence. If it's really hard (like an equation) the instructor should stop and either explain, or "wait for next week after it gels". (In really scary cases it "never gels" and then you just say "I'm not good at that". In "rolling thunder" topics like History, no one sentence is earth shattering, but reading something like Thorstein Veblen in the original might get you 3/4 of the way through until you say "Wait, What?"
In a really good .edu , the lectures would be recorded and posted so you don't have to scribble furiously. Then you just go investigating your own personal hyperlinks, and either ask them in lecture if they're right "centrally on topic" or office hours if they're baroque. The Prof knows he can't just stand there in silence for 45 minutes. It's like radio dead air. The savviest prof I had "repeated the book" - but she picked the parts she *knew* were "loaded bear traps" and then hyperkinetically amped up the mood until people stopped protecting their egos and really dug into it.
I agree the modern web is just a powerhouse - I daresay the 5 years I've spent on Slashdot is damn near equivalent to a course's worth of CS for NonMajors 101.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I remember checking out a couple of his lectures after hearing the story on NPR. They have come in handy on some topics where the examples I have aren't enough to fully explain the concept.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Parent's not offtopic adobe bitches!
Why is parent modded offtopic?
Probably because everything you said had to be gleaned by implication -- the poster just made a request without any background for it. People misheard it as rude and demanding apparently.
Currently hooked on AMP
Teaching in the future, will be more tailored to the individual, learning what he needs to forgetting about what he does not....
What I also see happening in the near future with this sort of teaching is that you will end up with many people overlapping knowledge..and collaborating more, if I know about general physics but buddy beside me knows more, for my present day problem I will consult with him, and he will have his use, where as the rest will be what I learned from this style course, unless I want to specialize, then I become like buddy for THAT specialization, not forgetting what I already know in many other fields...
Sort of like star trek, where self worth and social stature, is based more on what you know, so if you study to know more, you will be used more hence become more important within the community... I consider this to be the wave of the future....no more books, no more
schools per se...more just learning off the web, then applying your craft, and knowledge to the problem at hand...
Need to do taxes, read up all about it, then if you are still uncertain about a point, that point will be smaller and quicker to review with a specialist, then going to see an accountant for ALL your taxes...
Theres a competition to see who can review the most new books on Amazon. If you crunch the numbers they would have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the retail cost of these books plus every hour of the year reading the books and typing the reviews.
If you're using Safari on a Mac, install ClickToFlash, which in addition to letting you leave Flash off until you absolutely need it, shows YouTube video with an H.264 wrapper.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I stumbled across the Khan lectures a couple of months ago and I think they're great. Many thanks to Salman Khan.
Another series of lectures that appeared on television about 30 years ago is a show called The Mechanical Universe. They're not as deep as some of the Khan lectures but a bit more polished (not that it matters a lot). The Mechanical Universe lectures are available online at:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html
Too bad there isn't more of this kind of material on television. Maybe one of the cable companies could buy the Khan lectures and make them available as an on-demand feature.
It's modded "troll" now. If your comment looks like it was posted by a twelve year old, you'll be modded down (and I, for one, thank the moderators). Note that your comment, as well as links to what the apparent juvenile asked for, are modded up. If he had simply said "is there a torrent of this?" he would not have been modded down, and possibly would have been modded up.
Free Martian Whores!
I've watched a good deal of the calculus videos. They are very good. He does a great job explaining things.
I even donated a few bucks. I suggest doing the same. It's well worth it.
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
The scary thing is you are probably right. This is probably about as polite as some people know how to be. The point I realised that is the point I realised I have joined the "get off my lawn" brigade on Slasdot ... at little over thirty.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Not all Muslims are terrorists. Here is an example of a Muslim doing a Jihad against illiteracy, a Muslim who is helping humanity gain knowledge (regardless of their beliefs).
Of course I am also against state "license" of straight marriages as well. Unconstitutional crapola.
Why the two camps don't join together and demand the END of licenses to love and live with someone else is beyond me. They are both demanding to have LESS RIGHTS than what you are freely born with. Marriage is between you and partner(s) and your community and that should be it.
It's none of the government's business *at all* who you marry, and a violation of civil rights IMO-1st amendment, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th- to require some permission/permit/license from big brother to get married. Violates all of them one way or the other.
Every single solitary law/regulation whatever that is on the books regarding some government "marriage license" should be stricken and be made null.
USA marriage licenses are an archaic holdover from extremely racist jim crow miscegenation "don't mix the races" so called "laws". The same with gun control laws, they all started out with trying to deny born - with second amendment rights to people of other than Caucasian extraction.
Any contractural living arrangements, child care provisions, insurance, economic issues, whatever, are just that..and can be handled with a normal contract. There is no reason whatsoever for any marriage "license" other than overreaching big brother action.
But you see, it is much preferable for big brother and the two corrupt criminal political party gangs, who make up big brother, to keep people divided and conquered, so that's why both political gangs insist and demand to have a "license" for a born-with right.
Mea kulpa; very sorry please forgive me Mr Khan. I even read the article (to check if I couldn't find a linked torrent to troll the poster with), went back and copied from K Dawson. Oh the irony of having a nick which means I can blame only my own failure. I shall find an appropriate punishment for a troll. Go and read 4chan or dive off a bridge or something ..
P.S. In searching around I have found that
I'd hope that someone starts downloading and manages to put all these up on a traditional download site (ibiblio or something?) and / or torrents.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Aha! Proof that releasing content under an open license encourages piracy! [/ASCAP]
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
I find behavior like that to be offensive, discriminatory and illogical. You don't mod as a troll or offtopic because someone uses all caps, fails to spell, writes in 31337, etc.. You don't dismiss someone's ideas because you don't like their face!
I know it's done, but it ought not to be and I thought slashdot was better than that.
I want my Cowboyneal
Rude and demanding... and on topic.
A stylistic choice to write your post like a lolcats image should not have any impact on how it's modded.
I want my Cowboyneal
Clearly Salman Khan is a teaching genius and his educational materials are a precious gift for the (Internet) world.
Every slashdotter should donate at least a dollar to say thank you. I have.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question